


once in twenty lifetimes

by darthswift13



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Based on a Taylor Swift Song, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:21:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25540501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darthswift13/pseuds/darthswift13
Summary: She knew that what she’d found with him was a once-in-twenty-lifetimes miracle, and echoes of their love would haunt her forever.In which Ben and Rey fall in love in college and eventually find their way back to each other.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 21
Kudos: 120
Collections: Reylo/Folklore Drabble Collection





	once in twenty lifetimes

**Author's Note:**

> This little drabble is based on the song "cardigan" from Taylor Swift's album "folklore", with a few references to some of the other tracks sprinkled in, too.

“Have I ever told you you’re the prettiest woman in the whole world?” Ben slurred, his breath visible in the cold winter night air. 

They had gone out for drinks with their friends, and Rey offered to drive Ben home after he had downed a little too much whiskey.

Rey rolled her eyes.

“You are drunk, Ben Solo.”  
  


“And you are the prettiest girl in the whole world.”

She hoped he couldn’t see her blushing under the pale glow of the street lamps.

“You need to get home and get some rest, Ben.”

Ben shook his head. “No. Want to stay with you.”

“You can see me tomorrow, Ben.”

He shook his head again. “Dance with me.”

“Ben, you need to go ho— ”

He took her hand and spun her around, and Rey giggled. “ _Ben_.”

“You look even more beautiful bathed in the glow of the streetlights with snowflakes dusted lightly in your hair.”

“You are ridiculous,” she told him, but she was blushing again. “Only an aspiring English professor would say such flowery things after seven shots of whiskey.”

“Just tellin’ the truth,” he slurred. “I told you, you’re the prettiest girl in the whole wide world.”

He spun her around again, the hem of her skirt twirling, her high heels clacking on the cobblestones, and she laughed, a clear and bright and beautiful sound. 

But then he took her by surprise, pulling her in closer by her waist.

“Kiss me,” he mumbled.

“Ben, you’re drunk.”

He frowned. “You don’t wanna kiss me.”

“I didn’t say that, Ben,” Rey said quietly, looking up at him through the snowflakes clinging to her eyelashes.

A grin peeked across his face. “You want to kiss me? The prettiest woman in the whole world wants to kiss _me_?”

“I’ll kiss you tomorrow. If you still want me to.”

“‘Course I’ll still want you to. I’ve always wanted to kiss you, from the very first moment we met.”

Rey trapped her lower lip between her teeth, eyes darting to the ground nervously. “I’ve always wanted to kiss you, too, but I was too scared to admit it.”

“You really think I wouldn’t want to kiss you, too?”

“I always thought you saw me as just a friend,” Rey admitted, glancing back up at him again.

“Definitely not,” he assured her, reaching forward to touch her cheek. “I think you’re the prettiest woman in the world, and I wanna kiss you.”

She blushed again, her freckled cheeks flushing pink, warm under his fingertips. She pushed herself up on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek, and the resulting red flush on his face spread all the way to the tips of his ears.

Rey laced her fingers with his and smiled at him. “Let’s get you home, Benjamin.”

***

Rey was involved in a lot of extracurricular activities at Naboo University, but kissing Ben Solo was by far her favorite.

They would kiss under streetlights and at stop signs. They would kiss after he walked her to class, or in his car before dropping her off at her dorm. He’d steal kisses when they were in line for coffee, and she’d take his face in her hands and kiss him deeply in packed bars and on crowded dance floors.

One night their car kissing grew hungrier than it ever had before, with tangled tongues and wandering hands. 

Ben let his fingertips linger just under the hem of her sweater. “Is this okay?” he had asked her, and she nodded furiously. _Please, Ben._

She gasped when she felt his hands gliding upward, warm and soft and gentle, finding the delicate lace of her bralette, and she wanted to feel his hands _everywhere_.

He wasn’t the first person to kiss her lips but he was the first person to kiss her everywhere else, the first person she ever gave herself to completely.

And she knew from their first night together that he’d ruined her for anyone else. She felt silent tears pooling in her eyes after he fell asleep. She knew that what she’d found with him was a once-in-twenty-lifetimes miracle, and echoes of their love would haunt her forever.

Because she knew he would leave eventually. Just like everyone always did.

***

One night, sleepy and sated, Rey gingerly slid out of Ben’s bed to go get a drink of water. The sharp chill of the autumn air left her shivering, so she opened Ben’s closet and took out the first sweater she saw. It was a cardigan — thick, cable-knit, oatmeal colored, with elbow patches. She suppressed a giggle as she wrapped the cardigan around herself.

“Looks good on you,” she heard Ben saying, startling her; she didn’t know he was awake.

She turned around. “It’s an old man sweater,” she informed him teasingly. “I can’t believe you’re only 21 and you already dress like an old professor.”

“Hey, that’s my favorite sweater,” he shot back playfully.

Rey rolled her eyes. “Of _course_ it is.”

She crawled back into bed and let him wrap his arms around her. “I think you should keep it, though. It looks better on you, sweetheart.”

The sweater was warm and it smelled like him. 

She wore it home the next morning, and she never gave it back.

***

She tried to leave a few times. Tried to run away because she was scared to death of the way he looked at her with such adoration and devotion in his amber colored eyes.

He never let her.

Instead he listened when she told him about her parents and how they left her. How she’s never been able to trust anyone since. How she’s scared to death of losing him the way she lost them. 

He held her and kissed away her tears and made her feel like she wasn’t alone for the first time in her life. 

***

Ben applied to Oxford half as a joke. He never expected to get in.

But when he did, Rey could hardly tell him not to go.

They said they would make it work. And they tried so desperately to hold onto something that was like slipping through their fingers like the water in the ocean that separated them.

Ben promised to visit at Christmas. And he kept his promise.

There were tears in his eyes when he told her that the distance was getting to be too much. That he’d met someone else. But he wanted to do the right thing and end things with Rey first.

Zorii wasn’t Rey, but she was _there_ , and Rey wasn’t.

_You promised you wouldn’t leave_ , Rey barely managed to choke out.

_I’m so, so sorry,_ he had pleaded. He took the last train back to the airport.

He went back to England and slept next to Zorii, but he dreamt of Rey almost every night. 

***

When Zorii told Ben she loved him, he couldn’t say it back.

And he realized it was because his heart still belonged to someone else who was an ocean away. 

Someone who still wore his sweater to sleep every night.

  
  


***

It’s not that Rey never tried to move on, because she did. But she still saw his face in line at the grocery store and in the eyes of the men she used to fill the void in her heart that he created when he left her behind.

She had always known that he would inevitably leave her eventually, but she had foolishly thought that maybe this time would be different. That maybe _he_ was different.

And yet there was still some part of her that naively clung to wishes and what-if’s, wondering if things would have been different if he never left for England, wondered if he would still be waking up by her side everyday if she had begged him not to go.

But she _had_ to let him go, because he would’ve grown to resent her if she made him stay.

So all that was left to do was hope against hope that he loved her enough to come back eventually.

  
  


***

Exactly two years from the day he broke her heart, Ben Solo showed up on Rey’s front porch with a bouquet of flowers in his hands, sweating despite the cold. It was snowing, just like the night he confessed that he thought she was the prettiest woman in the whole world. 

She left him waiting in the cold for a while, which he supposed he deserved, until she finally opened the door, wrapped up in his cardigan, finally letting the tears stuck in her eyes fall down her cheeks.

“You came back to me.”


End file.
